I strongly believe that Jews around the world, including those in Israel , ought to be constantly reminded of the evil crimes committed in Palestine under their collective name, as well as understand the close ideological similarity between Nazism and Zionism.

This, I believe, is a legitimate tool to get Jews, especially those who still value justice and honesty, to reconsider their identification and infatuation with this evil entity and its equally nefarious ideology and actions.

Jews all around the world simply can’t love Israel and support its wanton criminality against the Palestinian people while at the same time continuing to lecture the world about the evils of Nazism. Moral consistency is absolutely paramount.

Supporting oppression and racism is often as bad as practicing oppression and racism. Indeed, oppression such as occupation can’t persist for a long time without the material and moral support and backing by people who may often look nice and speak softly. Many of the supporters of Apartheid in South Africa and Nazism in Germany also looked very nice and spoke softly, not knowing (or knowing) that they were tacitly backing evil, racist criminals committing ghastly crimes against humanity.

Zionism (the central embodiment of which is the apartheid Israeli state) is evil because of its racist evil ideology and criminal actions and behaviour in Palestine .

Zionism has declared all Jews a distinct ethnicity, just as the Nazis had declared all Germans a distinct ethnicity.

Both Zionism and Nazism strove to build a ‘state’ that would be ‘redeemed’ through violent purification (in the case of Nazi Germany) and ‘an Iron wall’ (in the case of Zionist Israel).

In both instances, ethnic cleansing was the main tool used to obliterate the ‘inferiors,’ the ‘water carriers and wood hewers’ in order to create ‘German-only’ settlements in Europe and ‘Jewish-only’ settlements in Palestine .

In all honesty, there are no fundamental differences between Jewish national socialism (Zionism) and German national socialism (Nazism). The Nazis preached the ‘Master Race’ to justify Nazism while Zionists adopted the ancient myth of the ‘Chosen People’ to justify Zionism.

Moreover, we can’t really ignore the absolute similarity between the Zionist ethnic conquest of Palestine and the implanting therein of ‘Jewish settlers’ at the expense of the native Palestinian Muslims and Christians, and the Nazi drive for ‘Lebensraum’ in Poland and the importation of ‘Aryans’ at the expense of the indigenous population.

Yes, there in Europe , the Nazis sought to steal the Sudetenland and here in Palestine , the Zionists are stealing the West Bank . The arguments are the same, the lies are the same and the means are nearly identical.

We need to highlight these similarities and the ‘common ground’ between Zionism and Nazism, irrespective of how many people will be upset by these comparisons. The truth is always a paramount value in itself.

There is no doubt that the Third Reich committed monstrous crimes against helpless Jews far greater than those committed by Israel against the equally helpless Palestinians. Yes, we all know about Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen Belsen, Treblinka and the other detention camps where many Jews, mainly non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews, perished at the hands of the Nazi exterminators.

However, let us ask ourselves the following question: Were the Nazis ‘Nazi’ only because they created and used gas chambers to incinerate their Jewish and non-Jewish victims? Would the Nazis have been less evil and therefore ‘less Nazi’ if they had annihilated their victims by way of bullets instead of ovens, or by starving them to death as Israel has been doing to the Palestinians? Besides, if Jews had the right to call the “Exodus Ship” a floating Auschwitz, why is it wrong for the Palestinians to describe as “Nazi” the ongoing extirpation of an entire people from their ancestral homeland? Do Jew have an exclusive right to call their critics and enemies “Nazi” while others, e.g. the Palestinians, don’t have a similar right to call Israeli crimes and criminals “Nazi”?

Besides, should we refrain from using the Nazi epithets to describe the racist criminals of our time, wherever they happen to be and regardless of what religion they adhere to, until and unless they start using gas chambers to exterminate their victims?

More to the point, by what logic are Israel and its supporters using the Second World War (a cruel war in which a few million Jews as well as nearly 50 million non-Jews perished) as a justification and cover-up to dispossess, dehumanize and ethnically cleanse the indigenous Palestinian people?

Well, Israel could theoretically annihilate most Palestinians with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, or simply through a sustained campaign of massive artillery bombardment and air bombing. Would such an act make Israelis less ‘Nazi’?

I want to ask those who might rave and rant against me the following question: At what point should we start calling Israel ‘Nazi’? When the number of its victims reaches one million? Two million? Or perhaps six million? Or when the Zionists start introducing Zyklon B to kill us? Or when 90% of Palestinians are packed into detention camps, surrounded by 8-meter high concrete walls fitted with watchtowers that are manned by trigger-happy Zionist Gestapo?

I know some Zionist apologists will be prompted, almost instinctively, to argue that, unlike Israel , the Third Reich had devised a plan, a final solution, to exterminate all Jews in Europe and the world.

Well, regardless of the historical authenticity of such a claim, I would challenge the Zionists and their supporters and apologists to prove that Israel doesn’t harbour a final solution for the Palestinians.

Isn’t the brutal extirpation of virtually an entire people from their historical motherland tantamount to a kind of final solution? Isn’t ethnic cleansing a form of a final solution? How about the continuing starvation, encirclement and hounding of the Palestinians? Besides, is there a fundamental difference between attempting to destroy an entire people pursuant a plan and attempting to destroy them without a plan? Wouldn’t the ultimate outcome be the same?

Don’t invoke the calumny of terror. We know and you know and the whole world knows that words like ‘terror,’ ‘terrorists,’ ‘axis of evil’ and ‘enemies of freedom’ are all ideological terms used tendentiously by the powerful and the arrogant, such as Israel and the United States, to justify their own true terror against the weak and the oppressed. Even Satan himself would call his enemies terrorists.

In the final analysis, ‘terror’ is the poor man’s war against the powerful and the arrogant, and ‘war’ is the strong man’s terror against the weak and the oppressed.

Yes, the scope of the Nazi Holocaust is greater than that of the criminal Zionist occupation of Palestine . But the mentality, the psychology, the malice, the hatefulness and especially the sheer evil intent in both cases are certainly not that far apart from each other.

There is no doubt in my mind that Israel would have exterminated, or at least tried to exterminate, the Palestinian people a long time ago had the ‘objective circumstances’ been available. Needless to say ‘objective circumstances’ here could mean a huge international event (for example, a nuclear war, a global national disaster, or a gigantic event of some sort) that would divert or shift international attention from such a genocidal feat.

It is true that Israel would prefer to ‘solve the problem’ without a campaign of mass murder and mass terror, like bullying and terrorizing the Palestinians, or the vast majority of them, into leaving their ancestral homeland.

However, there is no doubt that Israel would contemplate resorting to the ‘worst scenario’ in case the Palestinians clung to their homeland and remained steadfast in their homes and towns and villages.

In 2001, a few days after the 9/11 events in the US , then Israeli Defence Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer bragged about how the international media’s preoccupation with events in the US enabled Israel to kill more Palestinians in the West Bank without being censured by the international community.

Similarly, the former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told students at Bar Ilan University in 1989 that “ Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstration in China (the Tiananmen Square events) where world attention was focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsion among the Arabs of the territories.”

Even today, Israeli leaders say brazenly that they wish to wake up to see all of us dead.

Indeed, the Palestinian national demise has always been and continues to be Zionism’s ultimate goal, this is why Zionism doesn’t really recognize our very existence as a people, and when it does or is forced to do so under the pressure of reality, it insists that Palestine is Jordan and that Amman , not Jerusalem , is the capital of Palestine .

In addition, there is no doubt that the daily acts of murder, terror, humiliation and savagery which ordinary Palestinians are routinely subjected to at the hands of trigger-happy Israeli soldiers manning checkpoints and roadblocks throughout the occupied territories are comparable in many aspects to the same acts of humiliation and terror Jews and non-Jews had to endure in Nazi-occupied Europe.

The Nazis imprinted serial numbers on the forearms of Jewish internees, and the Israelis have done the same to the Palestinians.

The Nazis treated Jews as mere numbers rather than human beings, and the Israelis have done the same with the Palestinians.

The Gestapo savaged, brutalized and starved Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto to break their collective will, and Israel has been doing the same to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank .

The Nazis practiced all kinds of sadistic behavior with Jews, like for example, forcing Jewish musicians to play music for Gestapo and Wehrmacht soldiers, and the Israelis have done the same in the West Bank at the checkpoints.

I don’t know if Jews were forced to drink German soldiers’ urine as Israeli border policemen on several occasions have forced their Palestinian victims to do.

During the years of the two Intifadas (uprisings), I travelled throughout the West Bank , passing through Israeli army checkpoints and roadblocks. There, I saw the extent to which Israeli soldiers, many of them grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, behave bestially towards helpless Palestinians.

I saw soldiers murder innocent people on the spot for no genuine reason. I saw soldiers force young Palestinians to strip naked and stand for hours under heavy rain. I saw soldiers relaxed and enjoying the pain and suffering inflicted on thousands of Palestinians, passengers and motorists, whose only ‘fault’ was that of being Palestinian and weak.

I saw face to face the obscene sadistic acts practiced by Jews against their helpless victims. This behavior is not played out in isolated incidents. This is the norm, not the exception.

The Nazi-like occupation of Palestine by Israel is not the act of a few Israeli Jews. It is not even the act of the military establishment alone. It is the collective act of a morally desensitized society that has nearly lost its humanity and succumbed to a collective psychosis that is not unlike the moral blindness that struck the German people more than sixty years ago.

Today, most Jews are more or less either enthusiastically supportive or silent and apathetic about the atrocities being perpetrated in their name in Gaza , the West Bank and Lebanon .

In fact, I would exaggerate little by saying that many, probably a majority, of Israeli Jews are even enjoying and benefiting from the occupation.

In some ways, Palestinians have fared far worse than Hitler’s victims; for the Palestinian tragedy is ongoing and Palestinians, unlike Jews, who still receive compensation for losses dating back sixty years, receive no reparations for lost personal property, not even an acknowledgment from their tormenters of any responsibility for their dispossession.

Sixty years ago Zionists demolished 438 Palestinian villages and poisoned or destroyed wells to ensure that their rightful owners would not return. Today, Zionists keep on behaving more or less along the same traditions, demolishing homes, destroying farms, and narrowing people’s horizons, all with the goal of making them emigrate.

Today in every junior high school in America , students read Anne Frank, while in every high school Elie Wiesel’s ‘Night’ is requisite reading. This is the man who says brazenly that he readily identifies with Israeli crimes and that he couldn’t bring himself to say bad things about Israel .

The victims of the first Kristallnacht enjoy the world’s approbation and sympathy, while at the same time having succeeded in demonizing an entire people, for whom Kristallnacht still remains a night without end.

But, unlike the German national socialists, Jewish national socialists are falsifying history and reality to justify their crimes against humanity. The Holocaust narrative, which has been elevated to the status of a religion, allows Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, to invoke the mantra ‘Never Again’ while it sits on Arab lands stolen from Ein Karem and overlooking the unmarked graves of Palestinians massacred by Judeo-Nazi terrorists at Deir Yassin.

It is sad, really sad, that most Jews are now finding themselves in the shoes of their former oppressors, knowingly and consciously.

On August 23, 1947 , nearly one year before Israel’s birth, Harry Truman wrote the following to Eleanor Roosevelt, apparently in the wake of another Jewish atrocity in Palestine :

“I fear very much that the Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on the top they are just as intolerant and cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath. I regret this situation very much because my sympathy has always been on their side.”

Today, in light of Israel ’s Nazi-like behavior in Palestine , it is difficult to view Truman’s prophetic words with indifference. In fact, it is a moral obligation of the first order to oppose Zionism with the same vigour and same determination the world demonstrated in the face of Nazism.

Some Jews, out of ignorance or tribal loyalty or both, insist that opposition to Zionism is anti-Semitism. Well, if oppression and racism are consistent with being Jewish, then, yes, the world will be obliged to be anti-Jewish in a certain sense. Indeed, if anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, then anti-Semitism itself becomes a moral obligation upon all conscientious people, as Michael Neumann, Professor of Philosophy at Trent University in Ontario , Canada , so eloquently argues.

“Today, when Israel could have peace for the taking, it conducts another round of dispossession, slowly, deliberately, making Palestine unliveable for Palestinians, and liveable for Jews. And the purpose here is not to attain security, as Israeli propagandists and hasbara spinners would want us to believe. The real purpose is the extinction of a people, the Palestinian people.

“And Israel has enough PR-savvy to eliminate the Palestinians with an American rather than a Hitlerian level of violence. This is a kinder, gentler (creeping) genocide that portrays the perpetrators as victims and the victims as terrorists.”

“It is amply clearly that Israel is building a racial state, not a religious one. Like my parents, I have always been an atheist. I am entitled by the biology of my birth to Israeli citizenship; you, perhaps, are the most fervent believer in Judaism, but are not. Palestinians are being squeezed and killed for me, not for you. They are to be forced into Jordan , to perish in civil war. So no, shooting Palestinian civilians is not like shooting Vietnamese or Chechen civilians. The Palestinians aren’t ‘collateral damage’ in a war against a well-armed Communist or separatist forces. They are being shot because Israel thinks all Palestinians should vanish or die, so people with one Jewish grandparent can build subdivisions on the rubble of their homes. This is not the bloody mistake of a blundering but an emerging evil, the deliberate strategy of a state conceived in and dedicated to an increasingly vicious ethnic nationalism. It has relatively few corpses to its credit so far, but its nuclear weapons can kill perhaps 25 million people in a few hours.”

I frankly don’t believe that the Zionists are morally fit to lecture the world even on the evils of Nazism, and the reason for this lies not only in Zionism’s Nazi-like crimes against the Palestinian people and other peoples in the Middle East . It goes much further than that.

Zionism cooperated and collaborated with Nazism, not necessarily to save Jews, as the paragons of lies would claim, but rather to fulfil Zionism and Zionist statehood. And in order to expedite the evil goal, the Zionists quietly consented to the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews who could have been saved and sent to other parts of the world, especially North America .

In 1949, the Israeli intelligence employed Walter Rauff, an SS officer who is believed to have been responsible for the murder of at least 100,000 people and was wanted by the Allies as a war criminal. Israel, instead of bringing him to justice it paid him for his services and helped him escape to South America . Rauff, who had devised a plan to destroy Jews in Palestine, was by no means the only Nazi criminal employed by Israel.

Yes, it is wrong to blame each and every Jew on earth for the crimes of Israel . However, Jews can make a difference if they wish to, by speaking up against Israeli criminality and racism.

18/01/2010 Israel's government convened for the first time in Berlin, the former heart of the Nazi regime, for a special joint session with the German government highlighting the nations' bond six decades after the Holocaust.

High on the agenda Monday will be Germany's push to win the release of a captive Israeli occupation soldier held by Hamas resistance fighters and its efforts to curb Iran's nuclear program. Environmental issues, economic cooperation and efforts to restart the Middle East peace process are also to be discussed.

Meanwhile in Israel, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin called on the opposition to respect norms and pull the no-confidence motion it filed against the government. "The government of Israel is currently on an official mission, and the prevailing custom in the Knesset from days of yore is not to file a no-confidence motion when the prime minister is out of the country," Rivlin said during a Knesset meeting.

The historic trip was originally scheduled for late November, but was put off at the last moment when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fell ill with a viral infection and a light fever.

"We assign great importance to this good relationship with Germany," Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday. "It has far-reaching implications for Israel's economy, for Israel's policies, for our political struggle in the world and for Israel's security."

Monday's session follows a historic visit in March 2008 by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Cabinet to mark the 60th anniversary of Israel's establishment. During that three-day visit, Merkel addressed the Israeli parliament, in German, and expressed shame over the Holocaust. The 20-minute speech earned Merkel a standing ovation.

In that joint government session, a first for Israel, the two nations approved a series of cooperative projects. Israeli and German governments are scheduled to hold joint Cabinet sessions once a year. Germany has such arrangements with five other nations.

Though not on the official agenda, the German-mediated efforts to arrange a prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas, widely known yet not officially acknowledged by Berlin, will certainly be discussed.

Israel rejects UN Gaza war probe as US activist warns of Holocaust path

Quote:

An Israeli cabinet minister says Tel Aviv is to ignore a demand by the United Nations General Assembly to set up an independent investigation into the Gaza war - in which around 1400 Palestinians died a year ago. A UN panel has accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes. The Washington Post reports however that if things go this far, the U.S. would be likely to veto the move at the UN Security council - to protect its long-term ally Israel. But as reported, some in Washington oppose America's support for Tel Aviv.

.....The first people to colonise Palestine from Europe, at the time of the Ottomans - were actually Germans. The first Zionists therefore, were actually the Christian German Templars who came under the Reich of Wilhelm II, Emperor of the German/Prussian Empire. Kaiser Wilhelm II himself in fact, came to Palestine, found Mount Zion outside of Jerusalem, and bought the land off the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II as part of an amicable agreement and built an abbey on it. The abbey still exists, which remembers various biblical events within the existing structural complex to this day, in honour of the famous 'Mount Zion' of which 'Zionism' derived its name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Maria_Zion
14 years after the first German Zionists, the 'Jewish' Zionists mainly from Germany and Poland also began to colonise Palestine alongside their German Christian neighbours who were originally all part of the German Prussian Empire. The German colonists even helped with the construction of some of the first Jewish settlements. Therefore in the beginning, the colonies were in fact originally connected and came from the same region in Europe, regardless of religious identity and were part of the same colonialist plan. The original German Prussian Zionist colonisation of the region therefore can be seen to have coincided, therefore being a major contributing factor to the 1st World War that resulted with Britain.
Once the British, had defeated the Germans and the Ottomans, who had allied - the German Templars were then exiled to Australia and never allowed to return. However the Jewish Zionists remained, this time, under the protection of the British, even though covert alliances with their original funders in Germany and Poland still remained. Regardless of whether those 'interests' were 'Christian or Jewish Zionists' - technically the aim was to support economic interests whose aim was essentially to profit from the indigenous population of the region and their resources....
http://discoveringisraelpalestine.blogspot.com/2010/02/covert-training -of-zionists-by-nazis.html_________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

“The Lab” is a new groundbreaking Israeli documentary film that redefines our entire understanding of the Jewish state, its aims, its identity and its global destructive role. It is a fundamental and most important commentary on Israel.

In “The Lab”, Director Yotam Feldman exposes the Israeli military industry and its operation, and interviews key figures in Israel’s “security’ trade. He elaborates on the role of the industry within the Israeli society and economy – in the last few years Israeli “security” exports reached an unprecedented 7 billion US dollars a year. A full 20 per cent of Israeli exports are military or military related. Approximately 150,000 families in Israel are dependent on that industry. Israel is now the fourth biggest military exporter.

Emacs!

In the last decade every Israeli military operation led to an immediate and sharp increase in Israeli military export around the world: weaponry, systems, intelligence, strategies, doctrines, knowledge and experience.

The Israeli military elite is now deeply interwoven with the political and military elite of every country around the globe. This emerging Israeli business buys the Jewish state influence and support.

Feldman gives us a glimpse into a very organized universe. We visit Israeli weapon fairs around the world and see arenas filled to capacity with foreign generals, officials and diplomats shopping for Israeli military products. The message is clear: the 7 billion dollars is just part of the story. The Israeli military elite is now deeply interwoven with the political and military elite of every country around the globe. This emerging Israeli business buys the Jewish state influence and support.

“The Lab” makes it evidently clear that the Palestinian civilian population in the West Bank and Gaza are viewed as guinea pigs for Israeli tactics, weaponry and fighting philosophy (“Fighting Torah” – Torat Lechima – as the Israelis call it). The destruction of the Palestinians has now been transformed into a very profitable industry. We are dealing here with nothing short of highly calculated murder.

Through a set of fascinating interviews, Feldman conveys a very genuine picture of the Israeli death merchants. Feldman lets them talk, he hardly interferes. They are sharp, they are genuine, they are even funny at times, occasionally witty, and a few of them, might even be charming if you did not know who they are. But make no mistake: they are sinister, and some of them are clearly psychotic. They are mass murderers and they are free. They sell destruction and havoc and do it very successfully.

As an Israeli-born and raised musician and writer, I think I can recognize Israeli dedication, perseverance and creativity when I see it, no matter in what field it is deployed. (Perhaps I was lucky to be rescued by bebop.) The talent of those Israeli death angels is used to amplify human misery. The consequences are tragic.
Game changer

It is hadrly a secret that a century of Palestinian struggle has led to practically nothing. The state of the Palestinian solidarity movement is even more embarrassing. Feldman’s film, “The Lab”, is a game changer, for it can explain decades of impotence.

We are immersed in flawed terminology – “colonialism”, “apartheid”, “conflict resolution”, “Zionism” are just a few examples. Gaza is now a vast laboratory – the Israelis are the “scientists” and the “technicians”, the Palestinians are the “guinea pigs”.

Watching “The Lab” must lead all of us to fundamentally question our notions. We are dealing with a premeditated war crime. The notion of resolution (as in “two-state solution”), for instance, is not applicable. It is clear beyond doubt that in the real world the “scientist” does not negotiate with the “guinea pig”. The “scientist” also doesn’t consider sharing reality with his “guinea pig” in a “one democratic state”. Yotam Feldman’s “The Lab” is a glimpse into the Israeli mind: you clearly do not find much compassion there.

The transformation of the Jewish state into an oppression factory seems to be a direct outcome of Israel’s supremacist ideology. If we want to understand what is happening in the Jewish state, we must first grasp the notions of choseness, Jewishness and Jewish identity politics.

For decades we were foolish to examine the success and failure of Israeli military operations with reference to Israeli military and political “objectives” as we surmised them. We were clearly wrong.

As we learn from Feldman’s film, the real objective of Israeli operations may as well be examining new doctrines and operational systems in order to distribute them around the world soon after. Ehud Barak, for instance, wasn’t exactly the most sophisticated Israeli minister of defence – he clearly failed to defend his people or even make them feel secure. However, he was very successful in selling Israeli weapons and doctrines.

The prospect of Tel Aviv being subjected to a barrage of rockets may be seen by Israelis as devastating news but, from a military-industrial point of view, it was a golden opportunity to examine and promote the Israeli anti-missile system, the Iron Dome. If I am correct here, it becomes clear that, as with the Palestinians, more and more Israelis are also becoming “guinea pigs” in this ever growing military laboratory.

One may wonder how and when “the Zionist dream” transformed itself into a military business. Only a few of us, writers and scholars, have attempted to answer this question. The transformation of the Jewish state into an oppression factory seems to be a direct outcome of Israel’s supremacist ideology. If we want to understand what is happening in the Jewish state, we must first grasp the notions of choseness, Jewishness and Jewish identity politics.

I guess that enough Palestinians in Gaza do realize by now that they have been part of an Israeli experiment. Too often we learn from Palestinian doctors that while treating casualties of Israeli aggression they encounter new types of wounds. “The Lab” explains it but it isn’t Palestine alone. We also witness a growing similarity between the operational mode of police forces around the world and the Israeli military’s treatment of the Palestinians.

Watching Yotam Feldman’s “The Lab” explains it all. We are all Palestinians. We are either occupied by Israel or by its proxy forces around the world – those who are trained in Israel and implement Israeli weaponry and tactics.

I'm not ready to take on another video project, at the moment, but I get incensed when so many people—even intelligent commentators like Paul Craig Roberts and Man of the People, Roger Waters—insist on comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, when the comparison is quite absurd. Israel's policies are far worse than Nazi Germany's ever were.

Paul Craig Roberts wrote:
A person might wonder what is exceptional and indispensable about a government that is a reincarnation of Nazi Germany in every respect.

Roger Waters said:
The parallels with what went on in the 30’s in Germany are so crushingly obvious that it doesn’t surprise me that the movement that both you and I are involved in is growing every day.
It has been said that comparisons are odious, and they are even more so when the comparison is biased in the wrong direction.

Zionism's stated aim, as propounded by Theodore Herzl at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, August 1897, was to steal a land already occupied by others in order to create the Zionist Jewish State of Israel. And, ironically, it was not Adolph Hitler but Herzl who first coined the phrase “the final solution of the Jewish question” in a communication with the Czar of Russia.

The unification of Germany took place in 1871. However, as it was with many European nations at the time, there were many areas of conflict and dissent with local populations who spoke different languages and many German-speaking people were left out of the unified nation who, in troubled times, were at the mercy of opposing political forces in countries such as France, Poland and the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia.

But one factor was reasonably constant within these populations: their forbears had all been living in these territories for hundreds of years, no matter which language or dialect they spoke, or how they got pushed around on the political chessboard.

The Gathering Storm

On the front page of the March 24, 1933 issue of The Daily Express of London it was announced that Judea—also referred to as International Jewry—declared economic war on Germany.
This date can be taken as the true beginning of the Second World War, and it should also be noted that Germany’s influential Jewish population—industrialists and media owners—warned the instigators against this economic attack, but they were ignored. This then, is why Jews became The Enemies Inside the Gates of Germany and why many of them were later herded into concentration camps when it was clear that a shooting war was more or less inevitable. A parallel can be drawn with the internment of large numbers of ethnic Japanese living in the United States following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

In 1933, the German people had just elected a new leader, Adolf Hitler. The political infighting that preceded this is a vast story, but Hitler's election presaged the end to a long period of turmoil and economic woe in Germany and offered its people hope for a degree of stability and growth after they had been treated abominably, both territorially and economically, by the triumphant Allies at the end of the Great War, as manifested in the appallingly biased terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

After this, dare it be said, the Germans began to develop some of their long-lost pride as human beings, following the humiliation at Versailles, and much has been written and said about the concept of a superior race of people—an Aryan or Master Race—as propagandised by Hitler and its leaders.

The Aryan concept, despite claims to the contrary, pre-dates the Nazi era. The word originates from the Sanskrit word a–rya, in origin an ethnic self-designation, in Classical Sanskrit meaning honourable, respectable, noble. Nothing too wrong with aspiring to those qualities, even as a nation, I wouldn’t have thought. Compare that concept with the constantly reiterated claim of the Jews to be God’s Chosen People.

These feelings were epitomised in the aftermath of the assassination of a minor member of the Nazi party, Horst Wessel, in 1930. The famous, some insist on calling it infamous, Horst Wessel Lied, also known as Die Fahne hoch; The Flag is High—named after a minor member of the Nazi party who was shot by a member of the opposition Communist party, in 1930—had far more to do with pride and anti-Communism than an aggressive attitude towards any particular nation or religious group. It certainly had nothing to do with Jews, per se, although it is well known that Jews were prominent and very active in the rise of Communism in Russia, less than two decades earlier.

As an aside, Senator Joseph McCarthy would have applauded the sentiments of the lyrics in the early 1950s, because they can easily be related to his Reds-Under-the-Beds fears, but that was neither here nor there to those who were determined to blame Germany for absolutely anything and everything at the end of WW II, in 1945. Even today the Horst Wessel Lied is banned in Germany and Austria, and Amazon and Apple have been investigated for selling the song to German users. How dreadful!

One can only wonder what might have happened to the jingoistic songs of some of the Allies had they been the losers; for example: Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves . . . or the U.S. Marine Corps Hymn.

But no, it was only Germany's Horst Wessel Lied that got banned. What a pathetic way to attempt to skew history. Where do they come from, these petty-minded nit-picking people who think up such things? One of Abe Foxman’s ADL predecessors seems a likely culprit.

So, where was I? Oh yes, describing Germany's situation in early 1933. It is important to keep in mind that the vast majority of Germans were people whose forebears had been living in that general area of Europe for generation upon generation, so why shouldn't they have stood behind a leader who was prepared to stand up for them against the dual threats of International Jewry ganging up on one side and the Soviet Union, led by a preponderance of Jews on the other?
What would any sensible leader have done, under the circumstances? Prepare for the worst wouldn't have been a bad choice. Train up some battalions of crack troops, like other nations are wont to do these days. The British call theirs the SAS (Special Air Services) and the Americans have their Navy SEALs (Sea, Air, Land Teams) some of whom, not so long ago, formed a team that was sent off to murder an already-dead Osama bin Laden, and who appear to have been off'ed themselves on the orders of their commander-in-chief.

The big mistake that the Germans seem to have made was to give their specialist units such names as Waffen SS, far more aggressive-sounding than the cuddly SEALs, one has to admit, although it merely means Weapons Protective Squad (bodyguards).

Then you have the ominous-sounding sturm—in a military sense meaning assault—thus SS-Sturmbannführer equals Protective Squad-Assault Command Leader, but Hollywood and the BBC have a habit of making these names sound something like Baby Bayoneting Battalions when spoken by actors or documentary voiceovers.

So there was Europe, on the brink of what had all the makings of an international conflict and—despite popular belief—Germany was not the nation to cast the first stone. In fact it was not even a nation that did the casting, it was a religious organisation with territorial aims in mind, but not in Europe. It was Jewish Zionists, and the first stone was cast in March, 1933.

Now we come to what led to the creation of Israel. Remember that the so-called holocaust, whatever that really entailed, was not to occur for about 40 years when the Zionist plot—for the takeover of a large part of the territory surrounding Jerusalem; the so-called Promised Land—was first hatched, in 1897.

The Zionists planned to take over a territory known as Palestine which was already populated by Arab Muslims and Christians far in excess, in numbers than the then indigenous Jewish population which, during the late 1930s, was being surreptitiously increased by the implementation of the Transfer Agreement, made between the Zionists and the Nazis—yes, imagine that, the Nazis actually negotiating with the Zionists about German Jews being allowed to leave Germany and settle in Palestine—and this was achieved by bribes and deals made earlier between Zionist Jews and the British and American political establishments of the time and known, quite innocuously, as the Balfour Declaration.

It was this agreement which, in the fullness of time, would result in what the Palestinians call The Nakba—The Disaster—when well-organised gangs of armed Jews rampaged through the land, dividing and conquering; destroying hundreds of Palestinian villages and herding those they didn’t kill into enclaves such as the tiny strip of coastal territory called Gaza, which is under siege 65 years later.

So please, Paul Craig Roberts, Roger Waters and others, do think twice about comparing the excesses of the Jewish Apartheid State of Israeli—both at its beginnings and continuously ever since—with what has been propagandised about the German Nazis being the cruellest bunch of SS-Sturmbahnvillains since Ghengis Khan's Mongol hordes went on the rampage.

The Inevitable Accusations

Roger Waters’s statement has, inevitably, produced the usual fits of righteous indignation from rabbis and holocaust enthusiasts. Here are some quotes from the London Guardian:
Now leading American thinker Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has raised the stakes by describing Waters' views as audacious and clearly antisemitic.

Writing in the New York Observer, the rabbi said: "Mr Waters, the Nazis were a genocidal regime that murdered six million Jews.”

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: "Everyone is entitled to an opinion and to advocate passionately for a cause, but drawing inappropriate parallels with the Holocaust insults the memory of the six million Jews ­ men, women and children ­ murdered by the Nazis. These kinds of attacks are commonly used as veiled antisemitism and should be exposed as such.”

When are these people and those who pass on their drivel going to get honest? Everyone may be entitled to an opinion, but they are sure to get insulted and falsely accused by people like Boteach and Pollock who clearly have something to protect. The six-million figure has been widely questioned for many years, mainly because of its reiteration in earlier Jewish texts and it is now widely recognised as being utterly preposterous since the Polish authorities officially reduced the Jewish death toll at Auschwitz and its associated camps from four million to just over one million.

But here we have two prominent Jews, both engaged in the business of educating people—a rabbi, designated by two Guardian reporters as a leading American thinker and the chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust who is also a member of the Jewish Human Rights Coalition, UK —deliberately linking this spurious claim to aid them in delivering the ultimate accusation of intolerance towards Jews in general: that of being anti-Semitic.

British taxpayers might also like to know that this educational trust was voted a parliamentary grant of £4.65 million, in 2008, when it was announced that:
More than 1,500 students have now had the opportunity to visit the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau as a result of the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust.

So how did the myth of the six million Jews murdered by Germans manage to survive for so long?

A Summation of the Sequence

On April 18, 1945, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the New York Times reported that 4 million people died at Auschwitz and this fact has been bandied about for at least 50 years. (But please note, the numbers of Jews who allegedly died are not specified.)
Got that? 4 million people died . . . And just to be clear, I checked when the Russians actually liberated Auschwitz and its satellite camps to see if there could possibly have been any authentication of this number in such a short space of time. I searched for the information I was looking for in what I hoped would be a website acceptable to those who might wish to question my research. In the end, I came across an article on the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum titled: Liberation of Auschwitz which sounded authentic enough even for the likes of Abe Foxman and Alan Dershowitz, and here is the relevant quote:

On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and liberated more than 7,000 remaining prisoners, who were mostly ill and dying.

So the Soviets had had about two-and-a-half months to get the figures together for the New York Times report of 4 million although, as might be expected, there are reports that many documents were destroyed or carried away by the Germans as the Soviet army advanced.
But that information pales into insignificance when continuing to read the Liberation of Auschwitz article and discover the following:

It is estimated that at minimum 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945; of these, at least 1.1 million were murdered.

Hello, hello, hello—as British coppers are wont to say when things don’t quite add up—what’s goin’ one ‘ere?
We’ve got a rabbi (teacher) and the chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust both sticking to the six-million figure as well as bandying about the ant-Semitic accusation, which means that either they or the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum are not telling us the truth.
Clearly, if the original six-million figure was supposed to have been accurate—taking into account the number of alleged Jewish deaths at other German-run concentration camps for the not-insignificant period of half-a-century—then a reduction from four million to just over one million at the Auschwitz complex must mean that the total figure of six million Jews allegedly murdered by the nasty Nazis is out by about three million. Quite an error, one has to admit.

So, if such a huge error could have been hidden for 50 years, there is a distinct possibility that there were no planned exterminations. And it is a fact that no equipment that would have been necessary to operate the so-called death chambers has ever been discovered. Anywhere.
What were discovered were rooms equipped with machines designed to blow hot air over Zyklon B pellets, to liberate the hydrogen cyanide gas soaked into them and circulate it around clothes and bedding; Zyklon-B was an insecticide used to kill the lice that spread the deadly disease typhus. Zyklon B was used to save human beings, not to kill them. Now ask yourself. Why would so many of those pieces of equipment have survived, but none that had to do with exterminating humans? Had the Russian found such equipment, at Auschwitz, wouldn’t they have preserved it as evidence against their arch enemies?

Another reason why I am so suspicious about any information about this period is epitomised in an email I have just received, from YouTube, the text is as follows:

Regarding your account: Anthony Lawson

We have received a legal complaint regarding your video. After review, the following video: : Holocaust, Hate Speech and Were the Germans so Stupid? — Updated has been blocked from view on the following YouTube country site(s):

YouTube blocks content where necessary to comply with local laws.
Yours sincerely,
The YouTube Team

I received a similar notification about six months ago and I replied asking them exactly what a “legal complaint” was and why wasn’t I copied with its contents. But after several repeated requests The YouTube Team failed to respond.

To me, and many others, it is quite clear that details of certain events that occurred between 1933 and 1945 are being covered up, and that it must be the Zionist establishment that is doing it. It follows, then, that the reported rise in so-called anti-Semitism is being driven by the Zionists themselves, because of their dishonest behaviour in attempting to suppress any legitimate investigation or comment on what they call the Jewish Holocaust. It is, in certain countries, the only event in history on which open discussion is illegal, and many criminal prosecutions have resulted in heavy fines and imprisonment.

This is, of course, in direct breach of Article 19 in The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Whatever arrangements were made between the Zionists, Britain and the United States that resulted in the iniquitous formulating of the Balfour Declaration, in November 1917, and whatever accusations can be made against Adolf Hitler for aiding and abetting the migration of many Jews to Palestine, the behaviour of the Zionist Jews towards the indigenous population has been nothing less than shameful.

The majority of the lands in Palestine were the properties of the Palestinian rural population, the fellahin. In the process of the creation of the state of Israel, over 418 Palestinian villages were depopulated and destroyed. Bedouin semi-nomadic tribes were displaced and 104 Palestinian populated villages remained under Israeli control. Understanding the culture of the fellahin is key to understanding the system of land ownership in Palestine. Referring to the fellahin of Palestine as peasants, as they are often referred to is an unfair misrepresentation of Palestinian society and culture to say the very least.

Just imagine that your local county council decided that they were going to divide up the place you were living in and give more than half of it to a bunch of people you’d never met and who, when they arrived, told you—at gunpoint—which part of your house and your garden they were going to occupy and if you didn’t like the arrangement you could shove off.

The Balfour Declaration was converted into The Palestine Mandate by The Council of the League of Nations, in July 24, 1922. A section of which reads as follows:
. . . adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine . . . (emphasis added)

But, as we all know, the nations involved have done next to nothing, over the years, to pay even lip service to the rights of the non-Jewish communities that had been well established on that land for hundreds of years. Furthermore, it appears that the United Nations was in error, following WW II, to order the creation of the State of Israel. The closing paragraph of The Myth of the U.N. Creation of Israel reads as follows:

The U.N. could not deprive the majority of the people of Palestine of their territory and transfer it to the exclusive use of a minority in the country…. The United Nations Organization has no power to create a new State. Such a decision can only be taken by the free will of the people of the territories in question. That condition is not fulfilled in the case of the majority proposal, as it involves the establishment of a Jewish State in complete disregard of the wishes and interests of the Arabs of Palestine.

The Principles of Evidence

People who make accusations of anti-Semitism when they really mean anti-Zionism are rabidly dishonest, because there is absolutely nothing wrong with disliking or being anti a very suspicious and disturbing political movement that is opposed to democratic principles. It is well known that Zionists control politicians in many countries because they have the funding to buy their allegiance for the price of a candidate’s next election campaign, and it really doesn’t matter which party wins, as long as the fear of losing is always present, so that the successful candidates always feel beholden to those Who Pay the Piper.

It is also dishonest to characterise the search for knowledge about what is called the Jewish holocaust as denial. To draw a parallel, nobody denies that the Titanic sank, but trying to find out why it sank has never been considered to be disrespectful to those who died or to their loved ones who survived them.

It has been estimated that around 60 million people died during World War Two. Each and every one of those deaths was a tragedy, as was the pain and suffering caused by injury and loss to those who survived. But to prevent anyone from attempting to find out why such a war could have happened should be considered a crime against humanity.

The fact that about one-quarter of a billion people in Europe are not allowed to exercise their right to free speech and research on the single issue of what happened to the Jews, and why, is a despicable misuse of power by the Zionists and clearly indicates that there is a lot that needs to be hidden.

In a properly constituted court of law, anyone found to be bringing undue influence against those who had legitimate evidence to present on any issue being adjudicated, be it a matter of grievous bodily harm, fraud or murder would be in contempt of court.

If people like Karen Pollock and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach gave evidence to such a court, knowing that it was provably wrong, they would also be held in contempt and either jailed or fined, just as those some of those who have exercised their right to free speech about the so-called holocaust have been.

But one of the most despicable uses of Zionist power has been, and continues to be the attempt to prevent people from revealing the extent of the abusive and illegal actions and crimes of Israel against the Palestinians, by using diversionary tactics such as accusing anyone who criticizes Israel’s appalling behavior towards them as being anti-Semitic.

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her cabinet will visit Israel on Monday for two days.Germany and Israel are today due to sign an agreement allowing Germany to represent Israel's diplomatic and consular relations in countries where Israel has no embassy especially in Muslim countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia; German Der Spiegel newspaper reported.

The newspaper quoted a statement by the Israeli Embassy in Berlin saying the agreement promotes relations between the two sides and allows Germany to represent Israel's consular affairs in countries where Israel has no embassy. Der Spiegel also quoted the Israeli ambassador in Berlin Yakov Hadas-Handelsman as saying the German offer represents a special message from Germany and reflects its global status.

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her cabinet will visit Israel on Monday for two days. The delegation will participate in the annual German-Israeli joint cabinet session which started in 2008 to develop strategic partnerships between the two sides on various fields; mainly youth exchange projects and scientific cooperation.

Israel Navy gets fifth Dolphin-class submarine from Germany
New sub expected to arrive in Israel next year; a fourth vessel, the INS Tanin, was launched in Germany a year ago and is expected to arrive in Israel and be put into service by the navy in the next few months.
By Gili Cohen | Apr. 30, 2013 | 12:28 AM | 8

Dolphin - AP - 3.5.12
The Dolphin submarine being built at a shipyard in Kiel, northern Germany on March 27, 2012. Photo by AP

The ceremony was attended by the director general of Israel's Defense Ministry, Maj. Gen. (res.) Udi Shani; Navy Commander Rear Admiral Ram Rotberg; and other senior naval officers and Defense Ministry officials. Participants broke a bottle of champagne on the sub's bow as a sign of good luck.

The INS Rahav is Israel's fifth Dolphin-class submarine. All were acquired from Germany. The fourth vessel, the INS Tanin, was launched in Germany a year ago and is expected to arrive in Israel and be put into service by the navy in the next few months.

These two newest submarines are capable of remaining submerged for long periods of time using "air independent propulsion" technology, which allows non-nuclear submarines to operate without the use of atmospheric oxygen. The Israel Defense Forces says the two subs feature "significant technological developments" that render them superior to their predecessors.

The Defense Ministry has already signed a deal for a sixth Dolphin-class submarine, which is not expected to go into service until almost the end of the decade. Then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak signed the agreement in March 2012, and an Israeli team is in Germany now making preparations.

Germany will cover a third of the total cost, paying 135 million euros. Similar agreements were reached with Germany for both the Rahav and the Tanin.

Foreign media has reported that the new submarines are capable of carrying and launching cruise missiles with nuclear warheads, and that the submarine force would allow Israel a second strike capability in case of a nuclear attack.

what is this if not collective punishment with Israel presenting no evidence Hamas was behind this

Quote:

Since the boys' disappearance, the West Bank has witnessed the revival of collective punishment by Israel, the arrest of over 400 people, many of them activists in the Islamist Hamas movement, and at least five Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces. Israel has also approved more West Bank settlement expansion.

German Holocaust Reparations
World War II ended sixty-six years ago, but Germany is still paying reparations to Israel for the Holocaust. According to Strategy Page, Israel's purchase of German Dolphin-class submarines has been subsidized by Germany as part of ongoing Holocaust reparations.
Germany has agreed to pay 20 percent of the cost of a sixth Dolphin class submarine for Israel, which was ordered earlier this year. Two more are under construction, and will arrive in the next two years. ... The first two Dolphins were paid for by Germany, as was most of the cost of the third one. This is more of German reparations for World War II atrocities against Jews.
It's interesting that Holocaust reparations are helping pay for a key strategic force that helps ensure that Israel will not suffer a new holocaust.
The Israelis have developed a cruise missile, which is has a range of 1,500 kilometers and carries a 200 kiloton nuclear warhead. The objective of deploying nukes on subs is to further enhance deterrence to any nation launching a nuclear strike against Israel.
http://unreligiousright.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/german-holocaust-repara tions.html

In an address to the UN Security Council, OSCE chief monitor Alexander Hoog accused both Kiev and pro-Russia fighters of violating the terms of the mid-February Minsk truce agreement. Hug further said that the OSCE monitors were in many cases banned from entering conflict zones.
He noted that such actions hindered efforts to monitor the implementation of the Minsk agreement. The UN Security Council convened in the wake of a new wave of fighting which broke out in recent days. Washington and its western allies accuse Moscow of trying to create a sphere of influence in Ukraine’s volatile east. The Kremlin denies the allegations.

Transnistria shapes up as next Ukraine-Russia flashpoint
Neil Buckley Author alerts
| Jun 03 12:55 | 75 comments | Share
Keep an eye on Transnistria, the pro-Russian breakaway state in Moldova. On Monday, Dmitri Trenin, one of Russia’s best-known foreign policy analysts and a man with good Kremlin antennae, tweeted: “Growing concern in Moscow that Ukraine and Moldova will seek to squeeze Transnistria hard, provoking conflict with Russia.” On Tuesday, a columnist in the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper warned that Russia “seriously faces the prospect of a repeat of the [2008] situation” – when it went to war with Georgia – “this time around Transnistria”.
What sparked the tensions was a May 21 vote in Ukraine’s parliament to suspend military co-operation with Russia. That included a 1995 agreement giving Russia military transit rights across Ukraine to reach Transnistria, which borders Ukraine’s Odessa region.
Russian peacekeepers have been deployed in the unrecognised statelet since its brief war for independence from ex-Soviet Moldova in 1992, and Russia has a base there with about 1,350 soldiers and heavy weapons. Losing access via Ukraine means Russia must resupply its base by air through Chisinau, the Moldovan capital, and across Moldovan territory.
http://blogs.ft.com/the-world/2015/06/transnistria-shapes-up-as-next-u kraine-russia-flashpoint/

Many have wondered for years about the exact capabilities of the submarines Germany exports to Israel. Now, experts in Germany and Israel have confirmed that nuclear-tipped missiles have been deployed on the vessels. And the German government has long known about it. By SPIEGEL

The pride of the Israeli navy is rocking gently in the swells of the Mediterranean, with the silhouette of the Carmel mountain range reflected on the water's surface. To reach the Tekumah, you have to walk across a wooden jetty at the pier in the port of Haifa, and then climb into a tunnel shaft leading to the submarine's interior. The navy officer in charge of visitors, a brawny man in his 40s with his eyes hidden behind a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, bounces down the steps. When he reaches the lower deck, he turns around and says: "Welcome on board the Tekumah. Welcome to my toy."

He pushes back a bolt and opens the refrigerator, revealing zucchini, a pallet of yoghurt cups and a two-liter bottle of low-calorie cola. The Tekumah has just returned from a secret mission in the early morning hours.

The navy officer, whose name the military censorship office wants to keep secret, leads the visitors past a pair of bunks and along a steel frame. The air smells stale, not unlike the air in the living room of an apartment occupied solely by men. At the middle of the ship, the corridor widens and merges into a command center, with work stations grouped around a periscope. The officer stands still and points to a row of monitors, with signs bearing the names of German electronics giant Siemens and Atlas, a Bremen-based electronics company, screwed to the wall next to them.

The "Combat Information Center," as the Israelis call the command center, is the heart of the submarine, the place where all information comes together and all the operations are led. The ship is controlled from two leather chairs. It looks as if it could be in the cockpit of a small aircraft. A display lit up in red shows that the vessel's keel is currently located 7.15 meters (23.45 feet) below sea level.

"This was all built in Germany, according to Israeli specifications," the navy officer says,"and so were the weapons systems." The Tekumah, 57 meters long and 7 meters wide, is a showpiece of precision engineering, painted in blue and made in Germany. To be more precise, it is a piece of precision engineering made in Germany that is suitable for equipping with nuclear weapons.

No Room for Doubt

Deep in their interiors, on decks 2 and 3, the submarines contain a secret that even in Israel is only known to a few insiders: nuclear warheads, small enough to be mounted on a cruise missile, but explosive enough to execute a nuclear strike that would cause devastating results. This secret is considered one of the best kept in modern military history. Anyone who speaks openly about it in Israel runs the risk of being sentenced to a lengthy prison term.

Research SPIEGEL has conducted in Germany, Israel and the United States, among current and past government ministers, military officials, defense engineers and intelligence agents, no longer leaves any room for doubt: With the help of German maritime technology, Israel has managed to create for itself a floating nuclear weapon arsenal: submarines equipped with nuclear capability.

Foreign journalists have never boarded one of the combat vessels before. In an unaccustomed display of openness, senior politicians and military officials with the Jewish state were, however, now willing to talk about the importance of German-Israeli military cooperation and Germany's role, albeit usually under the condition of anonymity. "In the end, it's very simple," says Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. "Germany is helping to defend Israel's security. The Germans can be proud of the fact that they have secured the existence of the State of Israel for many years to come."

On the other hand, any research that did take place in Israel was subject to censorship. Quotes by Israelis, as well as the photographer's pictures, had to be submitted to the military. Questions about Israel's nuclear capability, whether on land or on water, were taboo. And decks 2 and 3, where the weapons are kept, remained off-limits to the visitors.

In Germany, the government's military assistance for Israel's submarine program has been controversial for about 25 years, a topic of discussion for the media and the parliament. Chancellor Angela Merkel fears the kind of public debate that German Nobel literature laureate Günter Grass recently reignited with a poem critical of Israel. Merkel insists on secrecy and doesn't want the details of the deal to be made public. To this day, the German government is sticking to its position that it does not know anything about an Israeli nuclear weapons program.

'Purposes of Nuclear Capability'

But now, former top German officials have admitted to the nuclear dimension for the first time. "I assumed from the very beginning that the submarines were supposed to be nuclear-capable," says Hans Rühle, the head of the planning staff at the German Defense Ministry in the late 1980s. Lothar Rühl, a former state secretary in the Defense Ministry, says that he never doubted that "Israel stationed nuclear weapons on the ships." And Wolfgang Ruppelt, the director of arms procurement at the Defense Ministry during the key phase, admits that it was immediately clear to him that the Israelis wanted the ships "as carriers for weapons of the sort that a small country like Israel cannot station on land." Top German officials speaking under the protection of anonymity were even more forthcoming. "From the beginning, the boats were primarily used for the purposes of nuclear capability," says one ministry official with knowledge of the matter.

Insiders say that the Israeli defense technology company Rafael built the missiles for the nuclear weapons option. Apparently it involves a further development of cruise missiles of the Popeye Turbo SLCM type, which are supposed to have a range of around 1,500 kilometers (940 miles) and which could reach Iran with a warhead weighing up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds). The nuclear payload comes from the Negev Desert, where Israel has operated a reactor and an underground plutonium separation plant in Dimona since the 1960s. The question of how developed the Israeli cruise missiles are is a matter of debate. Their development is a complex project, and the missiles' only public manifestation was a single test that the Israelis conducted off the coast of Sri Lanka.

The submarines are the military response to the threat in a region "where there is no mercy for the weak," Defense Minister Ehud Barak says. They are an insurance policy against the Israelis' fundamental fear that "the Arabs could slaughter us tomorrow," as David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the State of Israel, once said. "We shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter," was the lesson Ben-Gurion and others drew from Auschwitz.

Armed with nuclear weapons, the submarines are a signal to any enemy that the Jewish state itself would not be totally defenseless in the event of a nuclear attack, but could strike back with the ultimate weapon of retaliation. The submarines are "a way of guaranteeing that the enemy will not be tempted to strike pre-emptively with non-conventional weapons and get away scot-free," as Israeli Admiral Avraham Botzer puts it.

Questions of Global Political Responsibility

In this version of tit-for-tat, known as nuclear second-strike capability, hundreds of thousands of dead are avenged with an equally large number of casualties. It is a strategy the United States and Russia practiced during the Cold War by constantly keeping part of its nuclear arsenal ready on submarines. For Israel, a country about the size of the German state of Hesse, which could be wiped out with a nuclear strike, safeguarding this threat potential is vital to its very existence. At the same time, the nuclear arsenal causes countries like Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia to regard Israel's nuclear capacity with fear and envy and consider building their own nuclear weapons.

This makes the question of its global political responsibility all the more relevant for Germany. Should Germany, the country of the perpetrators, be allowed to assist Israel, the land of the victims, in the development of a nuclear weapons arsenal capable of extinguishing hundreds of thousands of human lives?

Is Berlin recklessly promoting an arms race in the Middle East? Or should Germany, as its historic obligation stemming from the crimes of the Nazis, assume a responsibility that has become "part of Germany's reason of state," as Chancellor Merkel said in a speech to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in March 2008? "It means that for me, as a German chancellor, Israel's security is never negotiable," Merkel told the lawmakers.

The perils of such unconditional solidarity were addressed by Germany's new president, Joachim Gauck, during his first official visit to Jerusalem last Tuesday: "I don't want to imagine every scenario that could get the chancellor in tremendous trouble, when it comes to politically implementing her statement that Israel's security is part of Germany's reason of state."

The German government has always pursued an unwritten rule on its Israel policy, which has already lasted half a century and survived all changes of administrations, and that former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder summarized in 2002 when he said: "I want to be very clear: Israel receives what it needs to maintain its security."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9iX6dmhaWU_________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

Udi Aloni said comments at Berlin Film Festival were directed at Israeli government, rather than at country he 'loves'

Filmmaker Udi Aloni is interviewed at the Berlin Film Festival
An award-winning Israeli director has branded Israel’s government as “fascist” during a press conference at a film festival in Germany.

Udi Adoni won the audience award at the Berlin Film Festival at the weekend. During a question and answer session about his film Junction 48 he said Germany supported the “fascist regime of Israel”.

Israel’s Channel 10 News reported that the 56-year-old called Israel a “democracy of white people” and criticised German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s support for Israel by saying: “Merkel does not mention the occupation and sells submarines to Netanyahu to continue such things.”

Aloni later told Channel 10 that his comments were aimed at the Israeli government and not his country, Israel, which he “loves”.

Aloni’s Junction 48 is a drama film telling the love story of two Palestinian rap artists who use music to challenge oppression in both Israeli and Palestinian societies.

The Israeli filmmaker said that “in contrast to the prime minister (Benjamin Netanyahu) … my movie spreads love and co-existence”.

The film is based on the life of Tamer Nafar, a Palestinian rapper who has previously labelled Israel a terrorist state.

Aloni said Nafar is “an amazing man” who has “from the beginning … sang about the fact that Israel is the real terrorist.”

Channel 10 News reported that Junction 48 received funding from Israel’s Culture Ministry. In response to the news, Miri Regev, Israeli minister of culture, said that Israel should not fund films that criticise the country in such a way.

Regev said Aloni’s statements were “clear proof that artists who subvert the state, defame it and hurt its legitimacy should not be funded by the taxpayer”.

Every year, around 700 Palestinian children are arrested and prosecuted in an Israeli military system notorious for ill-treatment and torture. We partnered with the American Friends Service Committee to create No Way to Treat a Child, a US-based campaign that seeks to challenge Israel’s prolonged military occupation of Palestinians by exposing the widespread and systematic ill-treatment of children in the Israeli military detention system.

Will you add your voice to this campaign?

Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that automatically prosecutes children in military courts that lack basic safeguards for a fair trial. We believe the US government must use all available means to pressure Israeli authorities to end the detention and abuse of Palestinian children._________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

Graphic video footage has emerged that purports to show an Israeli soldier shooting dead a Palestinian man as he lay injured on the ground after a stabbing attack.

Amateur footage shows the man, named as Abed al-Fattah Yusri al-Sharif, lying in the street as medical workers treat an Israeli troop who had reportedly suffered minor injuries after being stabbed.

Other Israeli soldiers can be seen surrounding Mr al-Sharif, who appears to be hurt but still alive. One of the soldiers is then seen raising his gun and apparently shooting Mr al-Sharif in the head, before blood is seen pouring from his wound.

Mr al-Sharif and another Palestinian man, Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi, had already reportedly been shot after allegedly stabbing a solider in Tel Rumeida, in the Hebron area of the occupied West Bank, according to rights group B’Tselem.

According to reports, both men died.

According to Ma’an news agency, the soldier was removed from the scene to receive treatment for moderate injuries.

The incident on Thursday morning is the latest example Israeli-Palestinian violence which has been escalating since October.

A spokesperson from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told The Independent: “The IDF views this incident as a grave breach of IDF values, conduct and standards of military operations.

“A Military Police investigation has commenced and the soldier involved has been detained.”

According to Ma’an, a witness said: “I heard gunshots, went outside my house to check what it was, and saw several Israeli soldiers yelling and two youths on the ground. A soldier approached one of the youths that was moving while yelling and opened fire at him from zero range.”

Responding to the video, Philip Luther, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International, said the shooting could amount to a war crime.

"The shooting of a wounded and incapacitated person, even if they have been involved in an attack, has absolutely no justification and must be prosecuted as a potential war crime."

“Israeli forces have a long history of carrying out unlawful killings – including extrajudicial executions – in the Occupied Palestinian Territories with impunity. Amnesty International has documented a number of similar cases during the upsurge in violence that began in October," said Mr Luther.

“While it is encouraging that the soldier in the video has reportedly been suspended and placed under investigation, previous Israeli investigations have failed to hold members of the Israeli forces accountable even when there has been clear evidence of criminal wrongdoing."

Mr Luther added: "The Israeli authorities must use this opportunity to end the culture of impunity that has made such killings increasingly commonplace.”

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has previously voiced “deep concern over reports of excessive use of force by Israeli forces”.

In December 2015, Cecile Pouilly said: “All instances of the use of force resulting in death or injury by law enforcement officers should be the subject of prompt, independent and impartial investigations.”

A right-wing, relatively hawkish figure by any other nation’s standards, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has found himself increasingly vilified by the rest of the far-right coalition, which has lashed him for repeated calls for the Israeli military to behave in an ethical manner and not kill indiscriminately.

The defense minister in the last two governments, the right-far-right government of 2013 and the far-right government of 2015, Ya’alon was being shifted elsewhere with the installation of a new, even-farther-right government, and opted to resign today, leaving both the cabinet and the parliament in the process.

On his way out, Ya’alon cautioned that the ethical issues of the new government pose an existential threat to Israel, warning that “extremists” have effectively taken over the government, with the incoming defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, an ultra-right hawk who has publicly called for the beheading of “disloyal” members of Israel’s ethnic Arab minority.

Ya’alon’s predecessor Ehud Barak, who held the defense portfolio from 2007-2013, echoed his concerns, saying the new Netanyahu-Lieberman government “is exhibiting signs of fascism.” He added that Lieberman was “unfit” for the position of defense minister.

Ya’alon’s comparative moderacy had been fueling political rows in Israel for awhile now, with the Jewish Home Party loudly condemning him and getting in increasingly public fights with Netanyahu. While it was initially thought Netanyahu might replace Jewish Home with the center-left Zionist Union, he surprised many with his 180, shifting further right and effectively placating Jewish Home, which cheered the replacement of Ya’alon with Lieberman.

Ya’alon will be replaced by Likud rabbi Yehuda Glick, primarily known for his advocacy for the creation of a new “sacrificial altar” on the Temple Mount. His calls to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount will likely please a lot of the religious settlers groups in the government, but his stance that the existing al-Aqsa Mosque remain and be open for Muslims is likely to put him in the awkward position of moderate.

He’ll just be a low ranking MP, however, and the real question is, with Ya’alon previously tapped as the incoming cabinet’s foreign minister, if someone else will take that mantle. The 2015 government had no foreign minister, while Lieberman held that post in 2013, though his bellicosity effectively forced Netanyahu to run diplomacy out of the prime minister’s office with most nations.

Netanyahu may decide to keep the post empty, with no other high-profile ministers to give it to, but some reports have suggested that this spot could be dangled as an inducement to the centrist Yesh Atid party to join the coalition.

Installing Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid as foreign ministry might be a best-case scenario for the new far-right government, as it would put a well-spoken moderate and charismatic former TV news anchor forward as the public face of the government internationally. His status as a moderate, however, and his support for Palestinian statehood, are likely to put him a bit too ideologically at odds to make a comfortable fit._________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

Danny Danon, Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations, speaks to the media before the security council meeting on the situation in the Middle East (AFP)
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Tuesday 14 June 2016 12:53 UTC
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Palestinian and Arab representatives have heavily criticised the election of Israel to chair a UN committee for the first time in the world body's 71-year history.

Israeli ambassador to the UN Danny Danon won the chair of the legal affairs committee of the General Assembly on Monday by picking up 109 votes from the 193 member-states.

Danon's candidacy was put to a vote by secret ballot at the request of Arab countries. All of the other UN committee chairs are chosen by consensus.

Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour criticised the Western Europe regional group, which includes Israel, for putting forward Danon's candidacy, saying he was divisive and unworthy of the task.

"They should have advanced a very responsible qualified candidate and not a big violator of international law," Mansour told reporters.

Yemen's UN ambassador Khaled Alyemany, who heads the Arab group at the United Nations, said he had sent a message to all member-states to protest the election of the Israeli ambassador.

"We cannot accept that a country like Israel, violator of international law and humanitarian law and the last colonial force existing in the world, has the right to rule on all legal affairs," said Alyemany.

Danon has long been a controversial figure on the Israeli political scene.

A longtime supporter of the settlement process in the occupied West Bank - recognised as illegal under international law - he opposes a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine, stating that there was "place only for one state on the land of Israel".

His appointment as ambassador to the UN was highly criticised even within Israel at the time.

“It is hard to conceive of a more short-sighted, shameful and damaging appointment,” wrote David Horovitz, editor of the Times of Israel.

Danon said he was "very proud" to be the first Israeli to head a UN committee and declared that it was "a pitiful moment to see some of the Arab countries trying to block that nomination".

Israel's candidacy was backed by the United States and European countries.

Most of the work on resolutions adopted by the General Assembly is done by committees, which present measures that are agreed by all UN member-states.

On 14 June, the annual conference on Israel’s security opened at Herzliya. While work got stuck on the discussions agreed, (like those of the Frenchmen, Français Jean-François Copé and Bernard-Henri Lévy), the walls trembled at the hour of closing.

The former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, [now] withdrawn from political life, accused the government of Netanyahu of “fascism” (while taking care to clarify, not fascism as the term is understood in relation to the thirties and forties).

Warning against a policy that leads Israel to its downfall, he detailed his successor’s secret plan:
1. Israel anticipates having perpetual control over the territories it conquered in 1967.
2. Israel has no interest in a solution for both States and opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state on its border.
3. Israel expects the rest of the world to conform and accept this reality. It expects that some difficult times – such as the terrorist attacks in Europe, the situation in Syria and so forth— will divert their attention.
4. Israel accepts autonomy for Palestinians but does not accept that they have a right to a State.
5. Israel patiently constructs colonies to construct, bit by bit, an irreversible title to the land.

Today it’s a much different company. It operates a dozen subsidiaries and employs 1,200 people in over 40 countries, selling wireless infrastructure, software for public transit ticketing systems, wastewater treatment, and more. But at the ISDEF Expo, an event held last June to show off Israeli technology to potential buyers from foreign security forces, the Mer Group’s representatives were only promoting one thing: surveillance products sold by the company’s security division.

The Mer Group’s evolution from cutting metal to electronic snooping reflects a larger shift in the Israeli economy. Technology is one of the main sectors in Israeli industry. And Israeli firms with ties to intelligence, like the Mer Group, are using their expertise to market themselves internationally. The company’s CEO, Nir Lempert, is a 22-year veteran of Unit 8200, the Israeli intelligence unit often compared to the National Security Agency, and is chairman of the unit’s alumni association. The Mer Group’s ties to Unit 8200 are hardly unique in Israel, where the cyber sector has become an integral aspect of the Israeli economy, exporting $6 billion worth of products and services in 2014.

When drafted into the army, Israel’s smartest youth are steered toward the intelligence unit and taught how to spy, hack, and create offensive cyberweapons. Unit 8200 and the National Security Agency reportedly developed the cyberweapon that attacked Iranian computers running the country’s nuclear program, and Unit 8200 engages in mass surveillance in the occupied Palestinian territories, according to veterans of the military intelligence branch.

Increasingly, the skills developed by spying and waging cyberwarfare don’t stay in the military. Unit 8200 is a feeder school to the private surveillance industry in Israel, the self-proclaimed “startup nation” — and the products those intelligence veterans create are sold to governments around the world to spy on people. While the companies that Unit 8200 veterans run say their technologies are essential to keeping people safe, privacy advocates warn their products undermine civil liberties.

In August, Privacy International, a watchdog group that investigates government surveillance, released a report on the global surveillance industry. The group identified 27 Israeli surveillance companies — the highest number per capita of any country in the world. (The United States leads the world in sheer number of surveillance companies: 122.) Unit 8200 veterans either founded or occupy high-level positions in at least eight of the Israeli surveillance companies named by Privacy International, according to publicly available information. And that list doesn’t include companies like Narus, which was founded by Israeli veterans of Unit 8200 but is now owned by Boeing, the American defense contractor. (Privacy International categorized Narus as an American company because it’s headquartered in California.) Narus technology helped AT&T collect internet traffic and billions of emails and forward that information to the National Security Agency, according to reporting in Wired magazine and documents from the Snowden archive.

“It is alarming that surveillance capabilities developed in some of the world’s most advanced spying agencies are being packaged and exported around the world for profit,” said Edin Omanovic, a research officer at Privacy International. “The proliferation of such intrusive surveillance capabilities is extremely dangerous and poses a real and fundamental threat to human rights and democratization.”
A poster, calling for the destruction of CCTV cameras, is seen on a column at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, in front of the Dome of the Rock on April 8, 2016.Jordan, who administrate the site, said it will set up security cameras around Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in the coming days to monitor any Israeli "violations." / AFP / AHMAD GHARABLI (Photo credit should read AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/Getty Images) A poster calling for the destruction of CCTV cameras is posted on a column at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem in front of the Dome of the Rock, April 8, 2016. Photo: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

TODAY, AMIT MEYER is a journalist, an unusual career path for a veteran of Unit 8200. Many of his colleagues have taken the skills in intelligence collection and hacking they learned in the military and monetized them in the private sector. Unit 8200 is a “brand name” in Israel, a celebrated institution that allows members easy access to tech companies after their service, said Meyer. Sometimes technology companies approach alumni of the unit; other times alumni recommend one another. There’s a secret Facebook group for alumni filled with job offers at tech companies, Meyer said. “In many cases you just put Unit 8200 in your CV, and magic happens,” he told The Intercept.
Neve Gordon, an Israeli scholar who has studied the country’s homeland security industry, explained that Israel’s prominence in the surveillance industry stems from the close links between the Israel Defense Forces and the technology sector. In 1960, the Israeli military was developing computer software — nine years before the Israeli software industry and university computer science programs even existed. Israeli military units that work with computers, including Unit 8200, have become a “conveyor belt” toward Israel’s military and homeland security industry, said Gordon.

Gordon said there are two other reasons why Israel plays such an outsize role in the global surveillance industry. One is that there are “hardly any” legal limits on veterans “taking certain research ideas they worked on in the military and developing them” in the private sector. In addition, said Gordon, Israel’s decadeslong occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, along with its periodic wars, “provides a laboratory for testing and fine tuning different commodities that are created, or different technologies.”

Those technologies are then exported around the world.

Mer Security is one of the companies exporting spy products. It is well-known in the country’s security circles; it won an Israeli police contract in 1999 to establish “Mabat 2000,” which set up hundreds of cameras in Jerusalem’s Old City, a flashpoint of tensions in the occupied area. In an interview with the Israel Gateway magazine, a trade publication, Haim Mer, chairman of the company’s board and also a Unit 8200 veteran, explained that “the police needed a system in which ‘Big Brother’ would control and would allow for an overall view of events in the Old City area.”

At the ISDEF Expo, Eyal Raz, the product director for Mer Security, told The Intercept about what “Israel’s greatest security minds,” as a company brochure puts it, have created. Raz was showcasing Open Source Collection Analysis and Response, known as OSCAR, which trawls through the internet and social media platforms and promises to uncover hidden connections from the data OSCAR collects and monitors.

Another product, called Strategic Actionable Intelligence Platform, or SAIP, takes that data in and groups it together. To pinpoint “actionable intelligence,” SAIP uses technology that can highlight words, sentences, and information that might interest intelligence officers. These types of language analysis tools are increasingly popular with intelligence services around the world as a tool for pinpointing the next threat. These products claim to “understand what it’s reading,” as Raz said. For instance, a list of chemicals included in a paragraph may seem innocuous to the layperson, but the language analysis machine can recognize that the person is talking about making an explosive device, Raz said.

Raz explained another feature of SAIP: Users can create an avatar “in order to get the credentials to closed forums and to gather information from closed forums. This is also one way you can counterfeit your activities.” Facebook does not allow people to create fake profiles, but the technology Raz and others are selling promises to blend into social networks so that profiles operated by law enforcement look authentic. Multiple news outlets this year have reported that the Israeli Police use similar tactics by creating fake Facebook profiles to befriend targets of investigations and monitor Palestinians. Though Israeli Police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld was quoted in one report as confirming the police use this tactic, he denied this claim when contacted by The Intercept.

Mer Group’s clients are in Israel and abroad. The company does “joint development” work with Unit 8200, according to Raz, and they recruit veterans from the unit to work for the company. Other clients are scattered around the world, including in Europe, though Raz refused to divulge specifics. But publicly available information shows, for instance, that in 2011 Mer inked a $42 million contract with Buenos Aires to set up a “Safe City” system, complete with 1,200 surveillance cameras, including license plate recognition technology.
Ahmed Mansoor, a Dubai-based blogger and activist, poses for a photograph in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on September 25, 2012. Ahmed Mansoor, a Dubai-based blogger and activist, poses for a portrait in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, on Sept. 25, 2012. Photo: Bloomberg/Getty Images

UNIT 8200’S TIES to the Israeli surveillance industry attracted widespread attention in late August, when digital security researchers at the University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab released a report detailing the provenance of a specific type of malware. They said it was likely that the United Arab Emirates had targeted Ahmed Mansoor, a prominent human rights activist, with sophisticated spyware that had the ability to turn his iPhone into a mobile surveillance device that could track his movement, record his phone calls, and control his phone camera and microphone.
Mansoor says he’s been targeted since 2011, the year he signed a petition demanding democratic reforms in the Emirates. “The state security authorities are basically very obsessed with the monitoring and spying on people, activists,” he said. “They are totally possessed with this kind of thinking.”

Citizen Lab analyzed the spyware after Mansoor received a text message with a link promising “new secrets about torture of Emiratis in state prison.” Rather than clicking, Mansoor sent the texts to the digital security group, which had also, in 2012, analyzed spyware created by Italian surveillance company Hacking Team that had infected Mansoor’s computer.

“We’ve never seen any exploits like this for a mobile device which operates on the very latest version,” said Bill Marczak, a senior research fellow at Citizen Lab who co-authored the report.

Details about the NSO Group are hard to come by. Their founders rarely talk to the press. They have no website. Israeli and foreign news media have reported that Omri Lavie and Shalev Hulio, the founders of the company, are veterans of Unit 8200. However, some Israeli outlets have reported that they served in other units. Still, at least three of NSO Group’s current employees served in the intelligence unit, according to their LinkedIn pages. And Unit 8200 veterans provided the company with $1.6 million in seed money to develop Pegasus, the name for the spyware, according to Defense News, a trade publication.

Zamir Dahbash, the spokesperson for the company, did not answer specific questions about the NSO Group, which was bought in 2014 for $120 million by a U.S. private equity fund. He told The Intercept in a statement that “the company sells only to authorized governmental agencies, and fully complies with strict export control laws and regulations. … The agreements signed with the company’s customers require that the company’s products only be used in a lawful manner.”

On its face, an Israeli surveillance company selling spyware to an Arab nation is striking. The United Arab Emirates and Israel do not have official diplomatic relations, and like in other parts of the Arab world, many Emiratis detest Israel’s decadeslong occupation of Arab lands. But NSO Group’s sale to the UAE is an indication of the growing ties between Israel and the Gulf state, which has a growing appetite for surveillance gear.

“These regimes are unstable in the sense that most of the people living in these regimes do not have basic rights,” said Gordon, the Israeli scholar, “and they constantly need to monitor and surveil their populations.”

In February 2015, the Middle East Eye writer Rori Donaghy reported that the UAE had signed a contract with Asia Global Technologies, a Swiss-registered company owned by an Israeli and reportedly staffed by former Israeli intelligence agents, to set up a surveillance system featuring thousands of cameras.

2017 doesn't look like being a good year for Bibi
Which means Israel will probably lash out wildly - with their craziest scheme on the shelf!Report: Netanyahu to be investigated for bribery, fraud
Police ask A-G to turn months-long secret inquiry into full-blown investigation as new documents come to light
http://www.timesofisrael.com/report-netanyahu-to-be-investigated-for-b ribery-fraud/
By TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF December 26, 2016, 9:49 pm
A months-long inquiry into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s affairs took a new twist on Monday, with police reportedly convinced that they will be able to open a full-blown criminal investigation against him in the next few days.

Police recently received new documents as part of a secret inquiry that began almost nine months ago, Channel 2 reported. Based on thpse files police have already turned to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit requesting that he allow them to open a full criminal investigation. The report stated that among the suspected offenses are bribe-taking and aggravated fraud.

A spokesperson for the prime minister said that “it’s all nonsense,” Haaretz reported. “Since Netanyahu’s victory in the last elections and even before, hostile elements have used heroic efforts to attempt to bring about [Netanyahu’s] downfall, with false accusations against him and his family. This [latest attempt] is absolutely false. There was nothing and there will be nothing.”

In June, it was reported that Israel Police Chief Roni Alsheich gave his go-ahead on the secret investigation by special police unit Lahav 433, but that he had demanded full cooperation on secrecy and that no details be leaked to the media.

Mandelblit also reportedly instructed employees in the state prosecutor’s office to look into allegations that Netanyahu accepted 1 million euros (about $1.1 million) from accused French fraudster Arnaud Mimran in 2009.

In May, Israel’s state comptroller issued a critical report on Netanyahu’s foreign trips, some of which were taken with his wife and children, from 2003 to 2005, when he was finance minister.

Earlier this month, in an apparently unrelated case, there were calls for the prime minister to be investigated for his role in a Defense Ministry deal to purchase submarines from a German company partly owned by the Iranian government.

The affair dominated public debate in the country last month, as accusations surfaced that the prime minister may have been swayed in the decision by business ties his personal counsel David Shimron had with the submarines’ builder, ThyssenKrupp. The purchase was opposed by parts of the defense establishment, including former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon.

On Sunday, police descended on the Defense Ministry to gather information relating to a ship-building contract with Germany, as part of a probe into how negotiations for multi-billion shekel naval deals were handled.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, confers with then-cabinet secretary Avichai Mandelblit during a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, on December 20, 2015. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)_________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

Is he a smooth-talking, disingenuous, cunning salesman who knows that everything he asserts about Israel being in danger of annihilation and not having a Palestinian partner for peace is propaganda nonsense, or, does he really believe what he says?

Before I offer my own thoughts here’s a quote from London-based Jamie Stern-Weiner who co-founded the New Left Project. In a recent article published by Mondoweiss he wrote this:

“If Benjamin Netanyahu hadn’t gone into politics he’d be on Broadway, hamming it up as a pantomime villain. Israel’s hawkish prime minister is theatrically obnoxious to the point where even Israel’s staunchest allies in the American Jewish community are urging him to tone it down. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t just show up to your house uninvited but brings along his dirty laundry, empties your fridge, urinates in the sink and then abruptly storms out, complaining about poor service”.

If President Obama had read that I imagine he would have said to himself something like: “Spot on, Jamie. Couldn’t put it better myself.”

If Netanyahu knows that his assertions are “bs” (a Carterism for bs), I think it could be said that he is following in the footsteps of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s propaganda chief. Underpinning his approach to propaganda was the belief that the bigger the lie and the more frequently it was told, the more likely it was that it, the lie, would be believed. (In my view that was the key to Zionism’s success throughout the second half of the 20th century. The good news is that as the 21st century advances the number of Europeans and Americans who are buying Zionism’s propaganda lies is decreasing).

Goebbels put into writing 18 principles for the guidance of all who were waging Nazi Germany’s propaganda war. Here are two of them.

14. Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.

a. They must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses.

b. They must be capable of being easily learned.

c. They must be utilized again and again.

16. Propaganda to the homefront must create an optimum anxiety level.

The evidence of Netanyahu’s success in creating an optimum level of anxiety on his home front is in the fact that the vast majority of Israel’s Jews believe that they are and always will be in danger of annihilation. But now comes what seems to me to be a contradiction. In recent weeks Netanyahu has taken advantage of events to play his fear card in Europe with calls to its Jews to move to Israel.

A question arising is this.

If Netanyahu really believes that Israel is in danger of annihilation, is he not being irresponsible in the extreme with his calls for Europe’s Jews to make new lives there?

The only answer I can think of is that he knows Israel is not in danger of annihilation and takes comfort from a statement made by Yitzhak Shamir, the Zionist terrorist leader who became prime minister. According to a recent article by Israeli writer Akiva Eldar, Shamir once said, “For the land of Israel lying is allowed.”

Any assessment of who and what the real Bibi Netanyahu is must consider what he may have inherited from his Polish-born father Benzion who changed the family name from Mileikowsky to Netanyahu.

Benzion Mileikowsky/Netanyahu was an historian and writer who always believed in a Greater Israel. He opposed the UN Partition Plan because it didn’t give the Israel-to-be enough land; and at the time he was in favour of “transferring” the Arabs out of Palestine.

In fact his analysis of what had to happen in Palestine for Zionism to get everything it wanted was exactly the same as that put into words by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Israel’s army and what was called “Revisionist” Zionism but was actually honest Zionism. (The only difference between it and what was regarded as mainstream Zionism founded by Herzl and led by Weizmann was that the mainstreamers lied about Zionism’s true purpose and the implications of it. As I describe in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, the mainstreamers went through the motions of pretending there could be an accommodation with the Arabs. They lied for two main reasons. One was the need to avoid provoking too much Arab hostility too soon. The other was the need to mislead and deceive Jews, in Western Europe and North America especially, about Zionism’s real intentions).

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'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

The scandal over a German company hiring Netanyahu’s personal lawyer and confidant David Shimron ahead of a massive deal to purchase vessels for the Israeli navy dominated headlines in the days ahead of the fires. But once the conflagrations spread, the scandal shifted to inside pages of the papers.

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“There was a deliberate maneuver by the prime minister to distract the public from the submarine affair,” Gal-On said. “The way he called the attacks arson and terror at such an early stage only led to more incidents of arson, which served him.”

Gal-On said she agreed with a controversial Facebook post of Peace Now cofounder Amiram Goldblum, who wrote that “Netanyahu’s incitement intifada is raging across the country,” and “It’s difficult not to see the connection between Netanyahu’s incitement following the arsons and the submarines scandal.”

While Netanyahu’s spokesman declined to respond, coalition chairman David Bitan, who is close to the prime minister, reacted by saying that “the extreme Left lost its mind a long time ago.”

Peace Now director-general Avi Buskila distanced the organization from the comments, stressing that Goldblum has not been with Peace Now for many years and calling what he wrote and Gal-On later said “a harsh, baseless accusation.”

Zionist Union faction head Merav Michaeli said she did not agree with the accusations.

“I won’t counter incitement with incitement by saying what she said,” she said. “We don’t incite against Netanyahu, but we legitimately criticize him. He often incites to distract the public but I won’t say he caused more people to start fires.”

The German business daily Handelsblatt reported on Monday that the delivery to Israel of an advanced submarine to be called Dakar is now subject to delay. The German-built underwater vessel is slated to be sent in two years but there is a dispute over who should pay for additional weapons technology embedded in the submarine.

According to the paper, “The boat has to be lengthened” to accommodate the weapon system. Handelsblatt said “informed” sources reported the spat between ThyssenKrupp – the manufacturer – and Israel.

Israel awarded ThyssenKrupp a contract worth €500 million in 2015 to manufacture four patrol boats. The four corvettes are now a new lightning rod in the dispute between Miki Ganor, Israel’s ThyssenKrupp representative, and the company.

The paper said Ganor commenced the patrol boat deal and was aided by Shimron, who inquired at the Defense Ministry’s legal department about the tender for the patrol boats and told Handelsblatt: “I did this for Mr. Ganor and was not tasked by ThyssenKrupp.”

The Knesset’s Committee on Transparency, headed by Zionist Union MK Stav Shaffir, met Monday for deliberations on conflicts of interest in Netanyahu’s employment of Shimron and his law firm copartner Isaac Molho.

An Israeli official admitted in 2010 that the Separation Wall was 'built for political and demographic reasons', while the man who designed it revealed how 'the main thing the government told me in giving me the job was to include as many Israelis inside the fence and leave as many Palestinians outside'

Ben White Monday 30 January 2017 - The Independent Online

President Trump meeting with Israel's President Benjamin Netanyahu EPA
In US President Donald Trump’s first week in office, three policy issues dominated the headlines: his plans to build a wall on the Mexican border, the President’s support for torture, and his executive order targeting refugees, residents and visitors from seven Muslim majority countries.

All three have prompted widespread outrage, in particular, the ban on refugees and blanket immigration restrictions being applied on the basis of national origin and religion.

British Prime Minister Theresa May, however, only issued a reluctant and mealy mouthed criticism of Trump’s scorched-earth approach to his first few days in the White House. May is one of only a handful of world leaders seemingly eager to position themselves at Trump’s right hand side.

One other leader, however, has gone even further than the British PM in seeking to praise Trump, both before and since his inauguration – and that’s Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu. There are a few reasons for this, including the tacit approval a Trump administration is expected to give to the settlement expansion bonanza already underway.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued
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But there’s another element at play here, which goes deeper than Netanyahu’s political agenda. For what many do not realise, is that the policies – and their undergirding ideology – that Trump is unleashing on the US have been pursued by the state of Israel for decades.

First, let’s take the wall. Israel began the construction of its Separation Wall in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) almost fifteen years ago. Justified in the name of “security”, some 85 percent of the wall’s route is built inside the OPT, to incorporate illegal West Bank settlements.

It was on that basis that, in 2004, judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague deemed the wall illegal, and called for its immediate dismantling.

Israel’s Wall is not even the security miracle that its defenders claim. None other than Israel’s own security services attributed a sharp decrease in “terror attacks” in 2005 to the “truce” unilaterally adopted by Hamas. Tens of thousands of Palestinian workers without permits enter Israel every day, with some 200 miles of “gaps” in the Wall’s route remaining.

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Bill de Blasio: Trump's travel ban is "unamerican"
The real link to Trump’s ideas comes in the justification of Israel’s Wall on “demographic” grounds; in other words, keeping Palestinians out because they are Palestinians – and note that the idea of a wall aimed at “separation” actually pre-dates the Second Intifada.

An Israeli official admitted in 2010 that the Wall was “built for political and demographic reasons”, while the man who designed it revealed how “the main thing the government told me in giving me the job was to include as many Israelis inside the fence and leave as many Palestinians outside.”

Then there’s torture. Trump’s unabashed endorsement of torture has horrified politicians, human rights activists and former prisoners alike. In Israel, however, the torture of prisoners is routine – and rubber-stamped by not just the state, but also by Israel’s Supreme Court.

Just last week, Israeli interrogators confirmed in Haaretz some of the methods used on detainees – including physical and psychological abuse. The revelations came as no surprise to Palestinians, nor those Israelis who have documented practices such as sexual torture.

READ MORE
Trump denies immigration restrictions constitute a 'Muslim ban'
This grim reality is also well-known to international human rights groups – Amnesty’s most recent annual report described how “Israeli military and police forces, as well as Israel Security Agency (ISA) personnel, tortured and otherwise ill-treated Palestinian detainees, including children.”

“Methods included beating with batons, slapping, throttling, prolonged shackling, stress positions, sleep deprivation and threats”, Amnesty added, further noting how despite almost 1,000 complaints since 2001, the authorities have not opened a single criminal investigation.

And finally, what about immigration? As horrendous as Trump’s orders have been, thus far they pale in comparison in scale and duration to what Israel has been implementing for some seven decades.

Since 1948 Israel has enforced a “Palestinian Ban” (Muslims and Christians), designed to ensure that no refugees can return to the lands and homes from which they were expelled. In parallel, the state’s borders are open for any Jewish person, from anywhere in the world.

READ MORE
Netanyahu tweet praising Trump's Mexico wall prompts global backlash
Not only that, but in more recent times, Israel has also passed legislation – backed again by the Supreme Court – that prevents Palestinians with Israeli citizenship from family reunification – purely “on the basis of the ethnicity or national belonging of their spouse.”

Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said of the law: “There is no need to hide behind security arguments. There is a need for the existence of a Jewish state.” Trump – and the likes of Steve Bannon – would approve. Just as they would, no doubt, of the fact that Israel approved just eight requests for asylum, out of 7,218 requests filed by Eritreans from 2009 to 2016.

Writing in +972 Magazine, Edo Konrad noted the double standards of those who condemn Trump, but who back institutionalised racism in Israel. Here in Britain too, Trump’s critics include those who justify, or ignore, Israel’s own toxic mix of walls, discriminatory immigration system and torture.

'...Thanks to the lovefest between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump, ignoring the Palestinian national leadership seems to be back on the front burner.

During both leaders' first meeting since the new United States administration took office, Trump repeatedly talked about the need for the Israelis and Palestinians to make peace but avoided mentioning the Palestinian leadership.

Apparently fearing the repercussions of Washington's withdrawal of both support for the two-state solution and recognition of the legitimate Palestinian leadership, the US sent CIA chief Mike Pompeo to President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Tuesday, February 14.

By sending the CIA chief rather than a political figure to visit President Abbas, the US is prioritising security issues - including joint security cooperation with Israelis - over the need to recognise Palestinian political and national aspirations.

Trump also casually walked away from a long-standing US and international consensus on the two-state solution, which has been the foundation of Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
'Been there, tried that'

The US president's naive comment on the two or one-state solution - saying he "can live with either one" - means Washington is likely to prolong the status quo of occupation.

Ever since the 1967 occupation, the United Nations Security Council has repeatedly expressed the illegality of the occupation, as in the preamble of Resolution 242 "emphasising inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war". (PDF)

By leaving the solution to the parties while, at the same time, politically bypassing the Palestinian leadership, the Trump administration is empowering the Israelis to dictate to the Palestinians any deal they want.

The sheer reality of the Israeli occupation and the absence of any political solution is a reflection of how Israel's current tactics have not been producing any results for decades now.

The problem is that Trump and Netanyahu's warm relationship and the former's withdrawal of support for the two-state solution further weakens the US' ability be an honest broker.

Hoping that Arab leaders will replace Palestinians and agree to make peace with Israel on behalf of Palestinians, is another mistaken proposal. As the saying goes, "been there, tried that".

In the past, Arab leaders as well as Israeli and US leaders have tried to find an alternative leadership for Palestinians and have failed miserably.

For instance, Egypt and Jordan resisted pressures from Israel and the international community on who should represent the Palestinians in the 1970s, and in 1974 the Arab summit recognised the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
Netanyahu and Trump's approach to the issue is pushing the region towards a more blatant and legalised form of apartheid in which the Palestinian majority in the occupied territories is stripped off their political rights while Jewish settlers enjoy full political and national rights....'_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

'Two former heads of Israel’s powerful domestic intelligence service, the Shin Bet, have made an impassioned and powerful intervention ahead of events to mark the 50th anniversary of the country’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in June.

One of the pair warned that the country’s political system was sunk in the process of “incremental tyranny”.

Ami Ayalon and Carmi Gillon were speaking ahead of a public meeting at a Jerusalem gallery which is threatened with closure for hosting a meeting organised by the military whistleblowing group Breaking the Silence, one of the main targets of the rightwing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

During his recent visit to the UK, Netanyahu also asked Theresa May to cut UK government funding to the group – a request that baffled diplomats as no direct UK funding exists.

“Incremental tyranny [is a process] which means you live in a democracy and suddenly you understand it is not a democracy any more,” Ayalon told a small group of journalists, including the Guardian, ahead of the event. “This is what we are seeing in Israel. The tragedy of this process is that you only know it when it is too late.”

Ayalon cited recent moves by ministers in the Netanyahu government to change the laws to hit groups such as Breaking the Silence by banning them from events in schools and targeting their funding, while also taking aim at the country’s supreme court and independence of the media.

Issues of freedom of speech and expression have become one of the key faultlines in Israeli society – in everything from the arts to journalism – under the most rightwing government in the country’s history.

The Babur gallery is under threat of closure after being censured by the country’s culture minister, Miri Regev, for holding an event with Breaking the Silence on publicly owned property – a group which Regev claimed “hurts Israel’s image”.
The Israelis and Palestinians who work together in peace
Read more

Gillon was equally bleak in his analysis of Israel’s trajectory, saying that the country was being “driven by this occupation towards disaster”.

He added: “This country was established on the values of liberal democracy, values written in the only kind of constitution we have – which is our declaration of independence – values we don’t fulfil any more. You can analyse what happened to us in the last 50 years, but everything is under the shade of occupation. It has changed us a society. It has made us an unpleasant society.”.........'_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

'...One assumption underlying discussion of the conflict in the US is that, while certainly capable of making “mistakes”, the government only ever acts benevolently—never absent good intentions. This is why Americans will never learn from the mainstream media what the greatest obstacle to peace is between Israelis and Palestinians: the government of the United States.

Simply stated, Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people could not go on without the US’s financial, military, and diplomatic support.

The US has historically given Israel more than $3 billion annually in military aid in the form of grants that serve largely as a taxpayer subsidy to the US arms industry as Israel uses the money to purchase military hardware used to oppress the Palestinians. This was increased last year under the Obama administration to $3.8 billion annually. The US also provides Israel with loan guarantees that are underwritten by the American taxpayers and allow Israel to borrow at lower interest rates.

When Israel commits war crimes against Palestinians, as during its major military operations in Gaza in 2008-09, 2012, and 2014, it does so largely with US arms. US-supplied military hardware includes Apache helicopters, F-16 fighter jets, F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters, GBU bunker-buster bombs, and white phosphorus munitions.....'

'...One of the key documents comprising the legal foundation of the two-state solution is UN Security Council Resolution 242.
The Meaning of Resolution 242

There is an extremely widespread misunderstanding about the meaning of Resolution 242; what is nearly universally reported as the meaning of the resolution is in fact an invalid Zionist reinterpretation of the text.

One often hears about Resolution 242 in terms of the “land for peace” formula. This is the idea that Israel would have to give up land in exchange for peace. Resolution 242, however, did not outline a “land for peace” formula; the simple reason for this is that none of the land in question was Israel’s to give.

There are two key operative subclauses in Resolution 242. It called for (i) the “Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” and (ii) the establishment of “secure and recognized boundaries” between them.

According to the Zionist reinterpretation, the absence of the article “the” before the words “territories occupied” means Israel only had to partially, not fully, withdraw.

In other words, the argument is that, since it doesn’t say “the territories”, we must understand it to mean “some of the territories”—patently absurd and self-defeating logic.

As a simple matter of English grammar, the absence of the article “the” has no effect on the meaning of the clause with respect to the extent of withdrawal. The extent was rather determined by the principal emphasized in the resolution’s perambulatory section that the acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible under international law.

The extent of withdrawal is also determined by the phrase “occupied in the recent conflict”. The Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, the Syrian Golan Heights, and the Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are all “territories”, plural, occupied during the 1967 war and hence territories, plural, from which Israel must withdraw.

A secondary argument underlying the Zionist reinterpretation is that implementation of subclause (i) was made conditional upon implementation of subclause (ii).

In fact, the Council stated that both withdrawal and the establishment of secure and recognized boundaries were necessary, conditioning neither one upon the other. However, there was a logical reason for placing the demand for Israel to withdraw first in order: the UN Security Council did not intend for Israel to be able to use conquered territory as a bargaining chip during peace negotiations.

The Security Council did not intend for the Palestinians to be forced to negotiate under gunpoint with the Occupying Power over how much of their own territory they would be allowed to retain for their own state.....'_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

Germany’s National Security Council has approved the sale of three advanced submarines to Israel, Der Spiegel reported Friday.

Israel will receive three more Dolphin submarines in a €1.5 billion deal with German conglomerate Thyssen- Krupp, in addition to the one already being built under the shadow of corruption allegations.

In April, Israel agreed to a request by Germany to insert a clause into the contract via a memorandum of understanding.

The clause gives Germany the right to cancel the deal if any improprieties or criminal offenses are proven as a result of an Israeli police investigation that is under way.

Israel currently has three Dolphin-class submarines and two Dolphin-2 class submarines (another one is expected to be delivered in 2018). The additional three Dolphin 2-class submarines, which are not expected to reach Israel for another decade, are set to replace the older Dolphins at a cost of combined price of €1.5b., a third of which will be subsidized by Berlin.

In November, questions began to be asked about the 2014 submarine contract when Channel 10 reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal lawyer, David Shimron, worked for the Israeli representative of ThyssenKrupp.

ThyssenKrupp itself has been accused of involvement in bribing officials across the world to promote its submarines.

According to Düsseldorf- based financial newspaper Handelsblatt, Thyssen- Krupp opened an internal investigation into suspicions that employees of its former London-based joint-venture Marine Force International had bribed officials in Greece, Turkey, South Korea, Pakistan and Indonesia.

Shimron had pushed for the multi-billion-shekel acquisition over the objections of the defense establishment, including then-defense minister Moshe Ya’alon, who only found out about the deal when it was leaked to the media. Ya’alon succeeded in stopping the planned purchase, but after he stepped down as defense minister, Netanyahu renewed the negotiations with Berlin.

Ya’alon has testified to police investigators in this affair, Case 3000, offering the details about the contacts Netanyahu held with German officials regarding the acquisition of three submarines and several other warships, all of which happened without the knowledge of the security establishment.

Ya’alon continues to voice his opposition to the deal and accuses Netanyahu of being corrupt. At an event in Beersheba last week, Ya’alon said it was the first time he had considered the prime minister to be corrupt.

“This was the straw that broke the camel’s back regarding Netanyahu,” he said.

“I had never suspected that he was corrupt. But then he went behind the back of the [IDF] chief of staff and the head of the navy to sign the deal with [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel, when the whole professional consensus – from the navy to the Defense Ministry – was that we needed five submarines, not six.”

Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit opened an initial probe of the allegations in February, which has since been elevated into a criminal investigation.

While Netanyahu is not a suspect in the affair, on Thursday Zionist Union MK Erel Margalit said police now believe the prime minister is connected to the submarine deal.

Margalit spoke after police questioned him about the affair at the Lahav 433 National Crime Unit headquarters in Lod.

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'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
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Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

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